MPs attend Chamber lunch

The City’s two MPs have been grilled by the business community at a recent lunch event.

Organised by Milton Keynes & North Bucks Chamber of Commerce and held at the Ramada Encore, over 50 Chamber members attended the lunch, together with Milton Keynes North MP Mark Lancaster and Iain Stewart, the newly elected Milton Keynes South MP, for an informal question and answer session.

Recently elected as a member of the Transport Select Committee, Mr Stewart (pictured right) gave an overview of his first few months in Parliament.

Mr Lancaster emphasised his continued call for “infrastructure before expansion” as a local issue. He said there was new opportunity to work more closely with the city’s neighbours in South Northamptonshire and Central Bedfordshire on the expansion and development opportunities available to the region now that the regional structure had been relaxed with the demise of the regional development agencies.

Attendees were keen to quiz the MPs on a range of subjects, including transport links for the city, renewable energy, public sector spending cuts, voluntary sector investment and the prospect of a local income tax.

Chamber chief executive Rita Spada said: “These types of events are crucial to enable the business community to have direct access to their local MPs.

“The business community has a vital role to play in the expansion and future prosperity of our city over the next ten years and beyond, and getting their views across to the MPs enables the community’s insightful and important views to be heard and, hopefully, acted upon.”